bout de papier, Vol. 25, No. 3 (2010) — Fall 2010 // Automne 2010, pp. 30–31
OBAMA’S WARS, by Bob Woodward,
New York: Simon & Schuster, 2010, 441 pp,
$34.99.
Bob Woodward is no stranger to anyone intrigued or fascinated by the American political process. Since he entered the world’s consciousness in 1972 with his riveting account of the Watergate scandal in All the President’s Men, he has produced on average a new book every two years. These have ranged from the inside workings of the American Supreme Court (The Brethren), to the death of John Belushi (Wired) to Ayn Rand’s disciple Alan Greenspan (Maestro). But most of all Mr. Woodward’s métier has been the Presidents of the United States or as they have been known to writers of fact and fiction, POTUS. Nixon’s troubled presidency warranted three books, but Reagan only one and that, indirectly, as it mainly dealt with the CIA under William J. Casey. The first Bush produced one book as well, but his successor Bill Clinton was the subject of two. The second Bush, given his troubled epoch, resulted in three books. And now less than two years into his Administration, Obama has his first dedicated volume.
All of Woodward’s books are consistently formulaic. They depend on wide-ranging and intense first person interviews with all of the players (over 100 for Obama’s Wars, recorded and transcribed and some running more than 300 pages) and wherever possible the personal accounts are supported by extensive documentation (National Security Council meeting notes, personal notes, memos, chronologies, letters, PowerPoint slides, emails, reports, government cables, calendars, transcripts, diaries and maps) much of which is labelled secret and beyond. It is a winning combination and has become more so over the years as many who are directly involved in leading and managing American affairs see Woodward as contributing to their perceived personal legacy.
Obama’s Wars follows this script and in its dealing with events that are still not history it is a valuable contribution to our understanding of the past decade and hopefully to the implementation of more appropriate policies. While the decade is over, its outstanding issues are still with us and there is little evidence they will recede into history anytime soon. The issues are numerous but mainly they centre around three questions — why is the Western world still bogged down in Afghanistan after nearly 10 years of war with little expectation of improvement? Why are we still unsuccessfully chasing Osama bin Laden and his cohorts around the mountains of northwest Asia? And, most elusive of all, what can be done to reduce the impact of our policies in Afghanistan on regional and international instability and the security of western cities?
Obama came into office with the high expectations associated with his successful election slogan of “Yes we can.” Central to his appeal apart from the uniqueness of his person was his early and consistent opposition to the war in Iraq and a willingness to look at the excesses and shibboleths of the Bush administration with freshness and energy. While his credentials on Iraq were
well known, the “war of choice” in his own words, Afghanistan, had been side-tracked
by the Bush administration, and from his earliest days in office Obama was lumbered with his characterization of that war as “one of necessity.” That differentiation, made early and in clear language, would more than anything else overshadow his consideration of policy on Afghanistan.
As Woodward notes, the differentiation between the two wars became more acute as the American surge of troops into Iraq in 2006 and the collective decision of many Sunni leaders to back away temporarily from support for Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, provided the first glimmer of hope that the withdrawal of American troops could be seriously contemplated. At the same time Obama reminded his advisers, “There is an economic crisis…and it would have to get most of his attention.” It is in this arena of pessimism, hope and expectations that Obama began his efforts to craft a new Afghan policy which took some 18 months and is the focus of Woodward’s book.
The diagnosis from his military advisers right from the beginning was the traditional one. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Michael Mullen advised that, “The Afghanistan War has been under-resourced for years.” “In truth there was no strategy” but “with the proper resources…they could succeed.” That advice set the theme of all of the subsequent advice from the military. Nowhere in the book is there so much as a hint that, despite the experience of the previous eight years, there could be an alternative approach to Afghanistan. More troops and Afghanistan could be won.
The book is rich in how Obama selected his closest aides, cabinet secretaries and other senior officials. At Defence, Bob Gates was persuaded to stay on while at State, in a move Machiavelli would have
approved, Hillary Clinton joined the team despite the recent bitterness on the campaign
trail and the hesitation of some advisers. In a less successful move, Marine general James L. Jones was persuaded to come out of retirement to become National Security Adviser, a move, according to Woodward, that he came to regret. A more activist general, Stanley A. McChrystal, was made commander in Afghanistan while General David Petraeus remained as Commander of Central Command which had overall responsibility for both wars.
It was these people, Clinton, Gates, Mullen, Jones, McChrystal and Petraeus who formed the core for the development of anew American policy on Afghanistan. For the most part they created the ultimate outcome of the policy debate which saw 30,000 additional American troops flow into Afghanistan, a flow that was only completed a few months ago. Only the Vice President, Joseph Biden, consistently provided the President with differing advice on Afghanistan and offered a perspective that more troops was not the answer. He argued there was a need for a less military-based policy. Biden lost the debate despite vigorous opposition to the very end.
As reporting at the time reflected, and Woodward details, the policy development process stretched over most of 2009 and was subject to ongoing criticism for its duration. Even before Obama was sworn in, in January 2009, Bush and his advisers were fully aware of the direness of the situation. Woodward quotes from an assessment done by Army Lieutenant General Douglas Lute and presented to the NSC in late November 2008. Woodward quotes Bush as saying when he received the report, “I’d rather not be reading this,” especially in light of one of the opening lines: “We’re not losing, but we’re not winning, and that’s not good enough.” Lute’s review concluded that the “US couldn’t prevail in Afghanistan unless it resolved three large problems. ‘First, governance had to be improved and corruption curtailed. Bribes and embezzlement were rampant…Second, the opium trade was out of control. ..And third, the Pakistani safe havens had to be reduced and eventually eliminated.”” Woodward quotes Condoleezza Rice as not agreeing with the report and Bush punted — “I don’t want any public rollout,” Bush said. “There won’t be any rollout plan. The rollout plan will be up to the new administration coming in, because this is going to be their bailiwick now.” In subsequent advice to President Obama, Lute expanded the list of problems to include the probability that the Afghan National Security Forces — army and police — could not be cured with a massive decade-long training program and that international support for the Afghan war was in peril.
The diagnoses of the problem did not change with the Obama administration. In February Obama approved the sending of 21,000 more troops, a request that was not acted upon by the previous administration. In the same time frame Obama reached out to Bruce Riedel, a former government insider from the CIA, the Pentagon and the NSC staff to do a strategic review of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Within days Riedel completed his report; he had a few months earlier published a book The Search for Al Qaeda, expressing the view that Pakistan was the “ ‘most dangerous country in the world today, where every nightmare of the twenty-first century’ converges — terrorism, government instability, corruption and nuclear weapons.” If that was not enough, General McChrystal in his early days in Afghanistan reported that “Afghanistan was much worse than he had expected. His 60-day assessment would be highly critical…and if the situation is not reversed soon, it might be irreversible.”
The review process took on a surrealistic air and soon was reduced to two questions: what were American objectives in the war and, even before that question was satisfactorily answered, the debate shifted to troop levels. Woodward’s account on the debate surrounding the purpose of the war centres on the initial question raised by Obama: “Do you need to defeat the Taliban to defeat Al Qaeda?” Most in the military were not prepared to answer that question and instead promoted a counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan that when all of the counting was finished would require at least 85,000 additional American troops. It was only when they were disabused that such numbers were not even possible, let alone discussable, that the debate centred on the eventual outcome of 30,000 additional troops with the possibility that by mid- July 2011 some withdrawals would take place. Even before all of the 30,000 were deployed, General Petraeus, who assumed command in Afghanistan following the public meltdown of General McChrystal, publicaly questioned the possibility of any withdrawals by mid-2011.
Woodward draws no conclusions from the debate and the corralling of a President by his advisers on the issue of the war in Afghanistan. He quotes from Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech: “So part of our challenge is reconciling these two seemingly irreconcilable truths — that war is sometimes necessary and war at some level is an expression of human folly.” Increasingly Obama is learning the hard truths that Johnson and Nixon had to learn in Vietnam. Vietnam is referred to frequently by Woodward — military leaders are loath to signal retreat when there is a possibility that more soldiers can be sent into a war.
As a footnote, by any measure Canada has been deeply involved in all things Afghan since the heady days of late 2001 when JTF2 troops became part of the effort to drive the Taliban from both Kabul and Kandahar. In the intervening years Canada has been part of every iteration of the Afghan saga with the past four years involving combat units chasing Talibanis around Kandahar province with little success but with enormous loss of life both Canadian and Afghan. This Canadian involvement reflected the worse of all policy muddles. There were too few troops trying to carry out a flawed policy. Sometimes in such situations it is possible to envisage that if the troops were sufficient it might be possible to have some measure of success even with a bad policy. But as recent months have demonstrated even with the influx of significant American troops into the area, there are few signs that they will have any greater success than the Canadians did.
But do not read Obama’s Wars with any sense it will have much to say about Canada. While there are occasional references to NATO, for the most part these relate to the possibility that NATO countries could flesh out the number of American troops that was being debated in Washington during the second half of 2009. There were only two specific references to Canada. The first related to a report commissioned by the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade containing the “depressing observation that some locals felt safest by bribing the Taliban.” The report noted that “Many city residents [Kandahar] believe that currently the most effective protection against the Taliban insurgents is not the number of police or international forces, but the payment of protection money, a practice that is already widespread.” Needless to say that report was not shared with Canadians by the government of the day. The second reference to Canada again relates to American troop levels and states, “The fourth US Brigade would replace the departing troops from the Netherlands and Canada.” Sic transit gloria mundi.
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Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 25, No. 3 (2010) — Fall 2010 // Automne 2010, pp. 30–31. Read the rest of this issue →
